The Suffolk house where two of the greatest women in British history spent their childhood years
The Suffragette leader Millicent Fawcett and Britain's first female doctor, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, grew up in this home in Aldeburgh.
For a family to produce an iconic figure in the fight for equality is impressive. For the same family to produce two is truly exceptional; and that brings us to the Garretts of Aldeburgh.
Newson Garrett and his wife Lousia (neé Dunnell) met and fell in love in London in the 1830s, but moved to Suffolk in 1840 with their four young children (the first four of what would eventually be ten). Garrett set up a business that started off shipping barley for brewing, but moved on to malting. Determined and hard-working, he quickly made a huge success of himself — and both Newson and Louisa were keen that their children do the same, regardless of their sex.
Newson Garrett and Louisa Garrett pictured in Millicent Fawcett's memoirs
The house they lived at is the one on this page, a beautiful Georgian home right opposite the church in the centre of the seaside town of Aldeburgh, where Garrett's business was based.
The Garrett family home in Aldeburgh, Suffolk.
Here the family spent 11 years from 1841 to 1852 — formative years in particular for two of the family's daughters, Elizabeth and Millicent, spent — before the Garrett's business became successful enough for them to build a new home, Alde House.
The original fireplace where Britain's first qualified female doctor and her iconic Suffragette sister once warmed themselves.
The Garrets old house became the Uplands Hotel in the middle of the 20th century, but was recently converted back into private accommodation. The agents, Bedfords, have just sold it, but they've kindly allowed us to use several pictures here which give a real feel of the character of the home.
The Georgian character of the Garrett home is still much in evidence, with generous room proportions and large windows.
Elizabeth, the elder of the two, was sent to a boarding school in Blackheath but her education seemed set to go no further until she heard of Elizabeth Blackwell, who had recently become the first female doctor in the United States. Her battle took years, saw her refused access time and again to medical schools across Britain, but eventually managed to join the British Medical Association in 1873 (a move so appalling to many of its members that the membership voted to block any woman trying to follow in her footsteps for almost 20 years).
Millicent Fawcett in 1870 and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson in 1875. Elizabeth was older by exactly 11 years.
She eventually won the battle, co-founded the London School of Medicine for Women, and held all manner of other posts, from president of the East of England region of the BMA to mayor of Aldeburgh. That latter role made her the first female mayor in Britain.
A poster advertising an event being led by Millicent Fawcett, referred to by her husband's name, Henry Fawcett.
Meanwhile, her little sister Millicent was blazing a trail of her own, becoming a leading light of the Suffrage movement in 1867 when joining the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, the organisation she would lead for many years.
Dame Millicent Fawcett addressing a meeting in 1913 in Hyde Park as president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies.
A calm and constant voice who always advocated for peaceful argument ahead of militant action, she took a deputation to the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, in 1917 that paved the way for the Representation of the People Act of March 1918.
Millicent Fawcett's statue in Parliament Square, in the heart of Westminster, was unveiled in 2018.
Exactly a century later, she became the first woman to have a statue erected in Parliament Square, London, where she stands alongside the likes of Mahatma Gandhi and Winston Churchill.
